Board holding back OC? - Wasted potential...

[jeece]

I have:
Athlon XP-M Barton 2600+ (1.725V) (Thermalright SP97 + Panaflo high)
A7N8X-E (ghetto Panaflo 60mm blowing over passive heatsink) (BIOS 1008)
Mushkin PC3200 lvl 2 TCCD 2-2-2 (2.8V)
Antec NeoPower 480
+ other irrelevant stuff

All this have been running fine @ 12x210 (2.5ghz) for the last months or so within reasonable temps (higher the CPU got was 56°C on load on hottest summer days, northbridge ~35 w/fan). I'm planning to W/C soon, so I wanted to squeeze some more MHZ on air, just to get an avant-gout...

A combo of 12.5x210 wasn't stable with 1.75V (didn't really tried hard), and if I try a 13x multi, it kinda lowers itself to 5x when I reboot? I get ~1000mhz CPU speed.But anyways, FSB overclock is better, right?

Seems I can't get past 212, even with a low multi (9x)... Dunno if it's the mobo, or the ram not getting enough voltage. I'd like to keep my 2-2-2 timings, see, but my BIOS doesn't have any VDIMM settings higher than 2.8! Do semeone know if BIOS upgrade 1013 "fixed" this? Any other way I could be sure what's limiting the FSB?

I just don't wanna get a new board (DFI, ABIT...), I've done enough spending on this "old" computer... I'd really like to hit at least 2.6 with this one though, and I know the RAM can take much more.

 

[thezfunk]

Well TCCD ram should be able to give much more than 215. But 2.8v is almost max I would go with TCCD without some nice cooling on there maybe about 2.85v...I am talking about active cooling. TCCD doesn't scale with volts like BH-5 or UTT does. It can but not as well. It could very well be your board. My Nforce2 doesn't like more than 215-220 but I know my ram can do 230 with tight timings because I can get it up there with an identical board I have. Your lucky too, my Nforce2 board HATES TCCD ram...Also sounds like your CPU might want more volts. My Mobile runs at 2700 but it needs 1.9v in bios which is 1.85 actual.